DEANA WILLHITE Jenny Lind Country Cafe Jenny Lind, Arkansas * * * Date: August 3, 2013 Location: Jenny Lind Country Cafe Interviewer: Sherri Sheu

Transcription

1 DEANA WILLHITE Jenny Lind Country Cafe Jenny Lind, Arkansas * * * Date: August 3, 2013 Location: Jenny Lind Country Cafe Interviewer: Sherri Sheu Transcription: Shelley Chance, ProDocs Length: 00:45 Project: Arkansas Pie

2 2 [Begin Jenny Lind Cafe] 00:00:01 Sherri Sheu: And Deana you had biscuits and gravy? Did you have anything to drink, coffee or anything? Deana Willhite: I had coffee coffee and water. [Laughs] 00:00:06 SS: Staying hydrated. 00:00:08 DW: Yeah. 00:00:10 00:00:13 SS: All right; so everything is working on my end, which is fantastic for me. And I want to get your name right. All right, so good afternoon; it is August 3, 2013, roughly 12:10 in the afternoon and I m in the back offices of the Jenny Lind Country Café. And I am sitting with Deana Willhite, and my name is Sherri Sheu and I am with the Southern Foodways Alliance. And Deana, would you mind introducing yourself?

3 3 00:00:47 DW: Deana Willhite, owner of Jenny Lind Country Café and known as the Pie Girl Pie Girl Pies. SS: And Deana if you don t mind, can you state your birth date for the record? 00:00:54 DW: January 21, :00:58 SS: And we are in Greenwood, Arkansas, correct? 00:01:01 DW: Jenny Lind community community of Jenny Lind. 00:01:04 SS: And that s a community that s a? 00:01:09 00:01:11 DW: It s a community out here. It s named after the singer Jenny Lind that come over here in the 1800s and they said she could really sing. And so we used to be called Actis and then they changed it; everybody she went with the circus and everybody changed it to Jenny Lind.

4 4 00:01:33 SS: And Deana can you just tell me about the history of the Jenny Lind Café? 00:01:38 DW: We opened up almost fourteen years ago and this used to be we re close to Fort Chaffee and it used to be a little German man got off a train and loved the community. It was a coal miners community and he was a shoe cobbler. So he worked on everybody s shoes and then he got to selling beer. And they said that the soldiers just worked it alive, coming from Fort Chaffee. And I always said, Well, Elvis was probably over here in this building, which Chaffee is just a couple miles away from here. And we bought it and it s been a restaurant ever since. SS: And what year did y'all did you and your husband buy the building? 00:02:15 DW: We bought it in October of :02:19 SS: And how what was the condition of the building when you bought it? 00:02:22

5 5 00:02:25 DW: Bad; it didn t have a window in it. Growed up; everybody said we were crazy, but we were determined. I ve been in food service most of my life and we just wanted our own place. So it s been a blessing. SS: And can you tell me, did you grow up in Jenny Lind? 00:02:40 00:02:43 DW: No; my husband is from Jenny Lind and I was actually from Mansfield. And we met and married and I worked for years in a factory. And I ve just always loved food. And so I quit that after eighteen years, the factory work, and been in food service ever since. SS: And how did you start out in food service? 00:03:00 00:03:03 DW: My mother had a café when I was little girl and I would cook for her help her and it just stayed in my blood. SS: What was the name of the café? 00:03:10

6 6 00:03:11 DW: It was just a short a it was a service station and short orders and back then you washed the windshield. You pumped their gas and you washed the windshield and she would cook hamburgers and stuff. And I just loved it. And I still got some of her stuff that I use today that she used in hers. SS: And where was the café? 00:03:34 DW: At Witcherville, just probably 10 miles from here down the road, yeah. But I ve made cooks out of everybody that comes around me now my son, my husband, all of them. They have all helped in here. 00:03:35 SS: So after your after you worked in the factory where did you? 00:03:50 00:03:55 DW: I worked at Whirlpool for eighteen years and I just wanted to do my son graduated high school and I just wanted to get into food service. So I quit a good-paying job but it was it turned out to be okay to do it. And then before we opened this I come down with breast cancer, stage four breast cancer and they gave me six months to live and that just made me mad and I

7 7 was forty-two years old and it just it just saved my life having this and determined to get up and get through it and I m through it now. So I m a survivor of breast cancer. SS: And that was in? 00:04:32 DW: That was January So it s almost fourteen fourteen years ago almost, yeah. 00:04:34 00:04:43 SS: That s amazing. And when you started when y'all opened up this this café what did you have on the menu? 00:04:50 DW: Basically the same thing, this country food. We fry our cornbread and just country food, good food. Quality food, you got to start with quality food. And then I just started doing pies and it just evolved to hundreds of pies and the holidays is I do a lot of pies and pumpkin rolls. And they and I ve mailed them to Colorado. I ve mailed pies everywhere. And people come from all over for pies. SS: And where did you learn to make pies? 00:05:22 00:05:24

8 8 DW: It just it just I just picked it up. I just don t know. They ve asked me that before, but it just I just it was just my forte. It s just what I love. But I would really love to get into more of desserts but it s just too much you know so. SS: Were pies a big part of your family when you were growing up? 00:05:43 00:05:45 DW: No; no, it wasn t. It just I don t know what done it. I just I made a coconut one time and my husband said, Boy that s good, and then I tried doing the chocolate and just but buttermilk is my biggest seller and of course people say buttermilk, but you don t even know it s got buttermilk in it. But I m number five in Arkansas with my pies and that means a lot to me. SS: So you didn t start making pies until after your kids were grown up? 00:06:11 00:06:15 DW: Yeah; yeah when I was over at Central City in my first restaurant that we were leasing and I just they just took off and they were good. And I m not a pie eater. [Laughs] And my husband is not a pie eater. But everybody else is apparently. SS: So 00:06:30

9 9 00:06:30 DW: I just love cooking. I just love to do it; I just love to do it. SS: So when you after you left your job at Whirlpool did you start your own restaurant? 00:06:34 00:06:40 DW: Yeah; I started right to a restaurant and started waiting tables and I kind of fell in with this older woman and she just took me in and she she passed away several years ago but she was just my mentor I guess. And I was like her daughter and she just taught me so much but not about pies, but just about operating a restaurant and cooking and just how to do it. SS: And what was her name? 00:07:05 DW: Marilyn oh I couldn t tell you now. 00:07:07 SS: And Marilyn was working in the restaurant? 00:07:15 00:07:17 DW: Yeah; she had it and I went to work for her and she just me and her just clicked and she just taught me so much so much.

10 10 00:07:29 SS: It ll come to you. 00:07:30 DW: It will. Isn't that crazy? 00:07:32 SS: And when you so when did you start leasing your your other restaurant, your the one you had before Jenny Lind? 00:07:40 DW: It was about probably 99, 98 or 99 for a couple years and we I just my husband said, Well, if we re going to stay in the restaurant business we need our own place. And we hunted and hunted and we were passing by here. We live one mile from here and he said, That s what I d like that s what I would like to have one. I said Oh, no, baby; I mean, it wasn t a window in it. It was growed up. Nobody had been here since 69 and some of the ceiling was falling in. And we we bought it; we three months renovated it, day and night, and he works a full-time job at Ream and I don t we were younger. We were just younger and determined. It s what it was. It s just been a blessing; been a blessing. 00:08:32 SS: And tell me a little bit about the history of the building. You were telling me before that it used to be a schoolhouse.

11 11 00:08:38 DW: Yes; the original Jenny Lind School and the piano out there is the original piano and every once in a while you can ask any waitress I have when we re in here and it s quiet and we re cleaning up like on Thursday night or Friday night, you hear them keys. It s not haunted by no means, but it s just a good feeling in here and old Joe, the one that got off the train out here, he s here; he s our protector. He s just here. I when I leave at night I say, Bye Joe; love you. See in the morning. When I walk in Good morning, Joe; it s just habit. We all talk to him. Now I don t want to see him or nothing. That would scare me. But he s just here with us. We got a big picture of him out there. And he s proud of us, I think. 00:09:24 SS: Tell me a little bit about your customers. Who comes to the Jenny Lind Café? I know driving in it s a little out of the way from the interstate and everything so who is the who are your customers? 00:09:36 DW: We re a mile off the main Highway 71; we have a lot of local and then we have people that call for directions. We have them come from Russellville and just want to make the day of it, a drive, and people just use their GPS and they see a place to eat. And we had two women coming up from way down south. They had been to a decoration at their dad s grave and they punched us in and when she said when they got out here, they said, This is at somebody s house. We re not stopping. Of course it wasn t. But just word of mouth; I have never done advertising. It s all been word of mouth. Just I always said, You serve good food they will come for it. It s just always been the way I ve done it.

12 12 SS: So take me back to the first day that you opened up business. What was what was that like? 00:10:23 00:10:31 DW: Nerve-wracking because we didn t wasn t prepared to be so busy out here. And understaffed and just we made it through it but it s just been a blessing. You know it s like I said, people will drive for good food. They they just will; it s something that people do three times a day and they re going to drive to eat. SS: And when did you start making the pies for the café? 00:10:51 00:10:53 DW: As soon as we opened. I mean as soon as I made them at my other place and that s where I kind of just thought, Well, I just really like doing these pies. So I just come in early and I do it while it s cool so I don t heat up the kitchen and like Thursday I think I baked like eight or nine pies just Thursday and I have them done by ten o'clock in the morning. You know I can just do it just whip them out now. But they re just something that s helped just helped my business immensely. 00:11:26

13 13 SS: And you had a great grin on your face when you were talking about making pies. Can you walk me through the process of making pies? 00:11:33 DW: Well, if I have time I make my own crust. It depends on what else I ve got going. If we got a party booked or whatever the day is going but I can whip one up; you know it depends on what kind I m making and my favorite is the buttermilk because I can slap it together and put it in the oven and forget it for an hour and a half. But the others if it s meringue, of course it takes longer and there s more to it. But I like to try new ones and just something different. SS: And how many types of pies do you make? 00:12:02 00:12:06 DW: Probably about sixteen or seventeen and during the holidays I do pumpkin rolls and chocolate logs, which is like a pumpkin roll only it s chocolate but they re so time consuming that I only do them during the holidays. SS: And what s your best seller? 00:12:22 DW: Of pie? 00:12:23

14 14 00:12:24 SS: Yes, ma'am. 00:12:24 DW: Buttermilk buttermilk pie. They we have a little boy; he s he s probably fifteen now but when he was little he called it crack pie because you get hooked on it. That s what he told me one time. I kind of I didn t want to laugh. He was so serious at telling me about the crack pie and I didn t want to laugh in his face you know but after he got done I kind of come back in the kitchen and chuckled because it was funny because he was he said, Me and mama call this crack pie because we re addicted to it. And I just thought that was funny for that little boy to say something like that and I didn t want to laugh. He was so serious about it. But he s probably about fifteen now and he was about seven at the time. But that s what he always said. He said, I want a piece of crack pie. [Laughs] 00:13:13 SS: And how often do you change up the lineup on your pies? How often do you introduce new pies to the menu? 00:13:20 DW: I usually just stick with I make a variety of all of them. The only time I was if they want to order a pie they will tell me what kind and it s normally one that I do. Very seldom and then if it s not it s one I will try. And I m a nervous wreck when I m trying it but it I ll call them or I ll tell them, I want feedback on this. You tell me and they usually call and say, Oh

15 15 it was wonderful. But yeah; I ve been nervous about them because they will sling one on me that I hadn't done. And then I normally just incorporate that with the rest of them. SS: What was the most recent one that you were surprised by? 00:13:55 00:13:58 DW: Blackberry, fresh blackberry; I had never done it and I was just nervous but she called me and said it was wonderful. So now you know I can whip one up and it doesn t make me nervous. SS: Fresh blackberry is hard to find. 00:14:09 00:14:11 DW: It is and of course I had to go to Wal-Mart and buy the blackberries because they wasn t in season and I was just like, Oh no; I don t know, but it wasn t nothing to it wasn t nothing. It wouldn t worry me a bit to make one today. SS: What is it about pies that just makes you light up? You 00:14:23 DW: That makes me light up? I don t know; I guess because it s just really my love. I don t 00:14:28 know; I just love doing them. I would rather do pies than cook a hamburger. My son in there he s

16 16 thirty-four and I plan on just I just want to turn everything over to him and I just want to do desserts and pies. I always tell my husband, I have a commercial kitchen at home that he built me that I make my pies in if I m at home and I tell him I want a pie wagon to go to the fairs. And we have a show truck and I said, When you retire in a year and a half, I could be over there in my pie wagon and you can be sitting out there at the truck at the car shows. He s kind of mulling that one over. [Laughs] But I would; I d be slinging pies and he could be rubbing on his truck out there. SS: I think that would be a great idea. 00:15:19 00:15:20 DW: Yeah; I would. I would love to have a pie wagon to maybe even go to the fairs or just all sorts of things when he gets retired in a year and a half because I plan on my son taking this over and I just do pies and look at the calendar and go War Eagle or just anywhere and do pies, sell pie by the slice and hand it out the window there a piece of pie. SS: And what s been the reaction when people try your pies for the first time? 00:15:45 00:15:49 DW: Hmm; like mama used to make it or grandma used to make it, yeah. They they like them and they like that calf slobber they call it meringue, they call it around here they call it calf slobber and they it s generally it s like grandma used to make or mama used to

17 17 make is what they usually say like and they love it when it s warm. Very seldom I let them cut them warm because they want to run but a lot of times the customers want it warms so I go ahead and let them cut like the coconut meringue warm because they like that warm feeling. Normally it s Oh, it s just like my grandma used to make it. 00:16:33 SS: It definitely sounds like a lot of your customers come in and they that s do they order? 00:16:38 DW: They always save room for pies. They save room for pies. You know dessert spelled backwards stressed spelled backwards is dessert, so there you go. I ve always going to paint that sign. I just hadn't got to it yet. SS: It would be nice to have something up 00:16:54 00:16:57 DW: Yeah; stressed spelled backwards is desserts. It makes a lot of sense, you know instead of eating chocolate, eat a piece of pie. SS: I always feel better when I have some pie after I m stressed out. 00:17:04 00:17:10

18 18 DW: Yeah. 00:17:11 SS: And where do you is there sort of a seasonality to your pies? Will you only make certain pies? 00:17:18 DW: Lemon, like lemon, I can't keep lemon made now because it s summertime. Wintertime, they don t eat lemon. I don t that s the only one that I ve ever really noticed that they just don t eat in the wintertime and they don t want it s too too tart or too summery about a lemon, but any of the others they ll eat it year-round. Of course they love the pumpkin rolls when it gets cold but I make them ahead of time and put them in the freezer because it s just too much. I mean I ve got three days of hard baking you know and Thanksgiving and Christmas because I let them get it the day before Thanksgiving so it will be fresh for the next day and I have to be ahead on my pumpkin rolls. I ll have thirty or thirty-five in the freezer because I can't do all of it at once. My ankles will be like that. [gestures large circumference] I mean they do, because I ve just done it but you know it s worth it. It s a love; it s a it s just okay to to for my ankles to swell during the holidays because I know they re going to enjoy it and I just pray over them and say, Lord bless this pie and the people who are going to eat it. SS: And how many pies will you make during the holiday season? 00:18:36 00:18:42

19 19 DW: I ll probably make 110 pies and maybe thirty or forty pumpkin rolls. It s a lot. That s a lot; that s a lot of baking. I mean I do three at a time in the oven and I have two ovens and I start at six o'clock in the morning and I may make it home at nine o'clock at night. But you know like buttermilk it takes an hour and a half and you know you just can't rush it. But I can be doing other things in between. And we re closed, so I don t have to worry about cooking the hamburgers and everything during that time. I come over here when we re closed to do it. It s a labor of love, something I enjoy. And on Sundays when we close and have extra I always drop them off somewhere just because I just give them to somebody. SS: That that has to be a nice feeling to 00:19:33 00:19:35 DW: Yeah; well you know, we close on Sunday and we don t open back up til Thursday. I d rather take it and give it to somebody rather than to keep them until then. They re just they see my car and they know what s fixing to happen. [Laughs] It may be two pieces of this and two pieces of that but they know what. Oh, here comes Deana; yeah. SS: About to get a treat. 00:19:57 00:19:59 DW: Yeah; We re going to get a treat. I just think that s one reason you get blessed with stuff.

20 20 SS: And you mentioned a little bit that about the hours of the Jenny Lind Café that y'all are open up Thursday through Sundays? 00:20:05 00:20:14 DW: Yeah; Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We open Thursday and Friday, 6:00 in the morning til 8:00 at night and Saturday and Sunday 6:00 in the morning til 2:00 and that s plenty for me. I just want it s not everything. And we could be open til 8 o'clock on Saturday and Sunday but it s just not worth it for me. You know I ve had that bout with cancer and it s just I d rather be at home. As long as we can financially do it then that s the way I like it. I m just not one to I don t know; I just want to get by, not get rich. SS: And the cancer I m sure definitely puts it into perspective. 00:20:53 00:20:57 DW: It does; it just I just don t want to do it so I could be open seven days a week, but I just don t want it s not worth it. You re wore out and you just don t have time for family or home or and it s just it s plenty. People have money on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and that s when they eat out. And out here where we re at that s just but now we ll book a party on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, twenty and above. We will come and open for the party but you know as far as just being open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we re not, but we book parties for them days especially during the holidays because I go way beyond on Christmas. It s an old-fashioned Christmas here with the motion mandibles and it it so they book Christmas

21 21 parties and normal car club parties and stuff. But you know restaurant like I said, we eat three times a day; you could be open 24 hours a day. It s depending on what you want out of life. I want to be able to sit on my patio and relax. It s just not everything. You can't take even take a memory with us. 00:22:09 SS: And from what you ve been how you ve been describing your everyday your everyday work that you along with making pies you re also very involved with the other aspects of the kitchen right? 00:22:24 DW: Yeah; all of it, yeah, me and my son and my husband on Friday nights and Sundays. Of course he s at work today up there but all of us and I get my son to go to Sam s or whatever. He helps; I couldn t make it without him. So I just want to turn it over to him one of these days and just stick strictly to pies. SS: And how long has your son been working here? 00:22:46 00:22:49 DW: He s been in Seattle so he s on really ever since we ve opened but now he s single and thirty-four and he wanted to go to move to Seattle for a while and he moved out to Duncan, Oklahoma for a while and he s not married and no children. I said, Go. You know, Go; you you can go because you don t have no bills, no credit cards; go. And and because you re one of

22 22 the few that can. Men your age has children and bills and can't go. So he I think he s got all that out of his system now. He s thirty-four and can he s just ready he says this is his future and he just loves it. And he has a knack for it. He he just really has a knack for it. I m blessed with that. SS: That s something that he picked up from 00:23:38 00:23:41 DW: Yeah; and he likes to just come up with a new idea and the plate has to be just so-so which I m so glad, but you know as a mom I ve just kind of learned to just let him roll with it and he s normally right. You know just let him decorate the plate and let him do it and it s okay. He s got the knack for it. SS: Have you taught him how to make pies? 00:24:01 00:24:02 DW: He has helped me a lot with pies, yeah, but he he would rather mom do the pies than he d rather be on the grill frying a steak or something. You know he d rather do that than to do the pies. But he s done a lot of pies in his years of this but he would rather not. So I would come in and do the pies if I ever just let him run with it. He d rather not really. I think he d tell you well, I d rather not but he s good. He does a pretty cake and pretty icing and everything. He does

23 23 good, but I think he s more comfortable with the food part of it. So I m just going to let him do that. 00:24:45 SS: And I noticed on the when I was coming in one of the signs said that the original owners are back in the restaurant? 00:24:53 DW: I leased this out about a year ago. I had been sick. I have been having trouble with my liver. And of course I thought my cancer had metastasized to it but they the cancer center told me no that it hadn't; it s just enlarged. And so I leased it out just for health reasons. And it didn t work out, so we re back. And we ve been back now about two months. But I kept making the pies for over here. It was just more or less stress and things not not going right for them. SS: And on in terms of pies where do you usually get your supplies from? 00:25:30 00:25:35 DW: Well see, I don t have no preservatives or nothing in mine. Mine is milk and sugar and vanilla and nothing, so I just whip them up, you know just milk, sugar, and vanilla and whatever I m making or cocoa. I mean my pies won't sit on the shelf for two weeks like at the store because they don t have nothing I mean they just won't do it. And you know like buttermilk and stuff like that but as far as preservatives or anything they just don t have none in it. They re just fresh fresh pies.

24 24 00:26:12 SS: And do you use fresh fruits in your pies? 00:26:15 DW: Yes; yeah if I m making a fruit pie which is a good winter pie, yeah. Of course I hadn't made no blackberries since a couple weeks but you can't get good ones right now you know. They re basic pies. They just don t have preservatives or anything in them. They won't sit on the shelf like at the store. 00:26:42 SS: And tell me a little bit about what I know in Arkansas it seems like people in Arkansas really enjoy their pies more so than maybe in some other States. What do you think it is about the pies that keeps drawing people in? 00:26:57 DW: I think because they ve always been around. I remember my grandmother always had a pie or a cake or something. It may have been an orange cake with no icing. But my she always I think they always had dessert. You always you know you had your your meat and your vegetables and your potato and your bread and you always had a dessert. Growing up we always had desserts. It may have been pudding or cake or but people are just accustomed to desserts with the meal. I have people that eat dessert before they eat meals. You know and that s strange to me but a lot of people eat dessert before the meal. You know we re just I think we re just what we growed up with. You just always had desserts with when you had supper. You had

25 25 dessert of something. It was a treat because we always had pinto beans and cornbread. We d have starved to death without that you know but we always had something sweet at the end of it. It may have just been like I said, mother may have whipped up some chocolate pudding or something but we had something sweet for dessert. I think it s just something that people was just raised with. And I think this newer generation they ve kind of got away from it, from the a meal and then dessert. You know a lot of them can't cook anyway unless it comes out of a microwave, so. I don t figure there will ever be a dying art, but I think it just mainly is our generation of desserts because we were raised with them. 00:28:42 SS: Though it does seem that a lot of younger folks don t know how to make dessert without the aid of a box or. 00:28:48 DW: Exactly or you know I don t know what kind of dessert has, but I mean you know they just eat different from what the way we were raised. You d come to the table and you d sit down and you ate and then you had dessert. And now they just all eat in front of the TV. You know they don t think about it or they just go by and get a Happy Meal and there is no dessert there. I think in all most people of course I have young people that gets pie all the time, but I think it s kind of that generation is kind of they don t know what they re missing. 00:29:29

26 26 SS: And I noticed when I was sitting up front a little earlier that you seemed to have a lot of regulars who come in. I noticed that all the your staff and everybody was greeting people by names. 00:29:44 DW: Most of them we do know; you know they ve come for years and you just get acquainted with them and we have an older couple that told us this morning they were leaving in the morning moving to Texas. And of course I got her phone number right here. Her name is Patsy Cline, and I m going to call them and check on them especially during the holidays you know. They ve just always come in; I just hate you know I hugged her neck and I just hate to see her go. You know just an older couple from here at Jenny Lind and I just hate to you just get acquainted with them and you just if they hurt you hurt; you know if they re sick you worry about them. But you can't forget them; you know Patsy Cline, you know, and that s her name, real name, so this you know you get to know them personally. And when we lose one, it just kind of like, well, you know, it s just part of Jenny Lind. There goes then you think, Boy I wished I d have asked them because we ve lost some through the years that told us so much history about Jenny Lind and you know it s lost now. It s gone. I wish I had recorded some of them. You know and when we opened this we had two customers, of course they ve passed now, but they went to school here in this building. You know, and I just wish I would have took time and recorded them and just really asked all sorts of questions about it about the community and. But it used to it was a coal mine little town; there was just little huts all down here they said and the train come through here and they had the company store across the street. And you know that s just slowly dying away. 00:31:31

27 27 So and I m glad we got to preserve this building you know or somebody would have bought this acre of ground and put a new house on it and then it would just have been gone you know. Time has changed. SS: And I m fascinated; before we were talking about how this used to be a a two-story building and you said that a tornado had taken off the top. 00:31:45 00:31:55 DW: Yeah; it warped the top and they took it they took it off. And I can just see all the men coming together to fix the school which they probably it was it probably served a lot of purposes. It was probably Town Hall meetings or funerals. I mean it probably served a lot of a lot of purposes. But I can just see all of them working to fix the school back and see. We have pictures of the children and they just look so poor, you know just no shoes and they all look the same and they just look tired, a tired little child is what it looked like lined up against this building right here. You know just it looked hard times. My mother always said they called them the good old days. She said them was the hard old days hard times. And I ve got pictures of when all this road was dirt and old cars and overalls and everybody was just everybody was just all equal. You know and everybody was poor poor back then. 00:32:57 SS: And is this part of with all of the decorations that you ve put up around the restaurant is part of that to preserve the history of Jenny Lind?

28 28 00:33:06 DW: Yeah; a lot of things. People a lot of that we found here on this property out in the basement and this attic down here. The basement down here was an ice house and it had the shoot where they shot the ice down through there and a lot of it we just found out in the grass and I d screw it to the wall. You know it was just part part of it. But just people through the years has brought pictures of school groups and just a lot just to preserve it, just to keep it old. I just love this building and it s just I would hate to something to happen to it. I m thankful that we bought it and can keep it here in Jenny Lind because after our generation is gone they re not even going to know this building was ever here. I mean you know should if something was to happen you know it s going to be well, there s where was that old school at, you know? SS: And what was this building after it was a school house? 00:34:03 00:34:06 DW: After it was a school house that s when Joe [inaudible] got off the train back here and he was the shoe cobbler and he he had a bar that run opposite of the way I have it now and he worked on shoes and then he started selling this was wet back then, and he started alcohol and just had a jukebox and we ve got a couple of the women still living that they they were young teenagers and their daddy would stick their head in the door looking for them and they would hide behind that chimney that s still out in front because the soldiers was up here and they wanted to come up here and see them soldiers. And they re still living and they tell them stories about hiding from their daddy and they d sneak out and come down here. And it just and then Joe died in 68 and then nobody was here til 99 when we bought it and it was just growed up

29 29 and the windows was broke out of it and it was in pitiful shape but we seen a vision. We seen it. It wasn t we renovated it in three months. I don t know how we done it. My husband and me, we done everything except we had to hire the plumbing; it had to go through the state code and everything for the plumbing. Everything else, electrical my husband done it and worked at Rheem been out there 41 years ; it was just determination. SS: And definitely a lot of hard work. You can see it in 00:35:33 00:35:36 DW: Well we couldn t do it now in three months for nothing. I mean you know we were just eager eager and I m just thankful for it. But we kept it as basic we kept it the whole inside just like it was all the wood ceiling, wood sides, everything, just like it was. SS: And what do you want customers to feel when they come into the Jenny Lind Café? Because as you said you ve been you ve kept a lot of the original stuff. 00:35:56 00:36:05 DW: At home; I just want them to you know we just have kitchen tables for tables, just to be at home and just get a good meal and relax and hear the old music. No rock and roll in here; it s country. We re just all country, just slow-paced; we re not fast food. I mean we get your food out in a good amount of time but you know we re just I want you to relax and have a good meal.

30 30 00:36:36 SS: And what how does the community use this space because you mentioned that a lot of this building itself has gone through a lot of different uses. How does how does the community currently use this space? DW: Uh 00:36:49 SS: I mean it seems like people it s also a meeting place for folks and? 00:36:53 00:36:58 DW: Oh yeah; like we have some of the older ladies that meet here the first Thursday of the month and then we have another group of Class of 64, they meet here, and then we have a Jenny Lind Group, the fourth Thursday of the month, and there is around twenty-five or thirty of them and they re all getting they re elderly. They all meet here and they see each other and just have a good good time. They just they just come to meet and they just like it. You know they re used to it. They just they all enjoy it and somebody comes in of course we have a lot of new people all the time. But most of the time you know who is coming in the door. You know you just know. And normally people have to we know when you re new because you re you re looking you re looking or you have to call for directions if you don t have a GPS and we so we know when you. Like we had a man call in twice; he was coming from Vian, Oklahoma and had seen an article in the in the magazine about us. Well, Bev and I were standing on the

31 31 porch waiting on him ushering them in. You know they just and they just loved it that we greeted them outside. 00:38:10 But I can I can spot a new person real fast because they re just they re trying to take it all in, in a minute you know. SS: And there is a lot to take in. 00:38:18 00:38:21 DW: Yeah; yeah. But people it s like you can just tell. They re looking you know and they read the articles on the wall and they learn stuff about Jenny Lind they didn t know, you know. 00:38:34 SS: Before I came here I was looking and that s kind of an odd name Jenny Lind is an odd name for a community and I had no idea that this that this singer was so popular back in the day. 00:38:45 DW: Yeah; the singer, she traveled with the circus. And we have a big article about her and a picture of her and they said she really could sing in the articles. And I ve looked her up on the internet and she traveled with the circus and they loved her so much around this area that they changed the name from Actis to Jenny Lind after her.

32 32 00:39:07 SS: Yeah. 00:39:08 DW: And this was back in the 1800s. 00:39:13 SS: Wow; tell me a little bit more about the media coverage that you ve received for your pies and for the restaurant more broadly. 00:39:21 DW: Well I ve had Channel 40 out here and we were voted most enjoyable and several writeups in different magazines. Kat Robinson out of Little Rock, on the paper has been out here just word of I don t really know how it gets out there; I just word of mouth and I just really don t know because I just don t advertise. It s all been word of mouth and like I said before you just you just have to serve good food in a clean place and they will drive for it. People will just drive to eat. It s kind of like a past-time for people nowadays. 00:40:06 On Sundays people want to go somewhere and they see us will ride up or see us on the internet and just some people do. One one thing I told my son, I said, Well people eat three times a day, you know, so people is going to eat. You know they can deal without other stuff but they can't deal without food. And we ve tried to stay our price is cheap where a family can come and eat and not break the bank. You know it s hard times for people especially like this time of year getting children in school.

33 33 SS: And when they come it really it does seem it really does have a family feeling to it. What has that what has that been like for you working with your family in here? 00:40:46 00:40:56 DW: I just like I just want people to relax and just enjoy their their their dining experience you know just enjoy it, not get away from the fast food and the hustle and the bustle of life you know. We we just let life control too much. We just do. Just I mean with my experience with life and being sick it s just so short; just take time to smell the roses. You just have to have to. SS: And I noticed y'all have a pretty strong presence on Facebook. What does that what does has the internet done for you? 00:41:30 00:41:39 DW: I don t even have I don t know anything about Facebook. I m not on Facebook. I just don t I ve never I don t know. I ve never been on Facebook. I don t have an account or anything. I m going to have to look. I ll have to get my son to bring it up because I have I can't even hardly bring up an . [Laughs] SS: Is your son the one that runs the account then? 00:41:58

34 34 00:42:01 DW: I don t think he s put us on Facebook as far as I know but I don t know. I know years ago, one of the fire guys done something on the internet but I never I don t know what it was. I know he had pictures of this on there. But I m just not a computer person. I m a pencil pencil and pad and I just hate computer stuff because it s just over my head. We didn t even have to have algebra in high school you know. It was a chosen course if you wanted it and of course I didn t choose it. I mean I just took my basics to get my credits. I didn t we didn t have to have it back then. Now I would be lost. SS: Algebra was definitely not the most fun. 00:42:44 DW: See it wasn t required back in the 70s when I was in high school. 00:42:47 SS: I think we ve covered most of what I wanted to ask. Is there anything else you d like to add? 00:43:18 DW: Come out and try us. We d be glad to see you. We ll give you directions. [Laughs] 00:43:26 SS: Will you promise to greet everybody on the porch? 00:43:33

35 35 00:43:35 DW: Yeah; we will if they call and say they re trying to find us, we ll be standing out there waiting on them, yeah sure will. See, I can't put a sign on the state highway; that s why we don t have no sign out there. They just won't let you do it. So, and I knew that from years ago and with another guy that has a garage you know he couldn t he tried to put a sign and they said no, no, you can't put a sign out. You can on these back roads, but you can't out on the state highway Arkansas beautification law. 00:44:07 Churches and real estates are exempt from that law. But I can't put a direction sign. I can't put nothing about the café out on the highway, which that s okay. I mean but you know it s it would be easier for people if I could put a sign out there. They told me I could rent a billboard for $1,500 a month. I don t think so. SS: I did see a couple of those the little directional signs when I was driving up on the telephone poles. 00:44:30 00:44:35 DW: He put them out this morning. My son went up there and put them out this morning because people just are having a hard time finding this because I can't put anything out on the highway. 00:44:46

36 36 SS: And I know my GPS actually had me take the wrong turn when I was coming in. [Laughs] DW: Probably, yeah; yeah. 00:44:51 SS: Well, Deana thank you so much for taking the time to 00:44:54 DW: Well thank you; thank you. It was good talking to you. 00:44:57 SS: and sharing all of your. 00:45:01 DW: I d like to feed you before you go. 00:45:02 SS: I would like that very much. 00:45:04 DW: All right. 00:45:04 SS: Thank you again. 00:45:05

37 37 00:45:07 DW: Yeah; thank you. 00:45:09 [End Jenny Lind Café]